Transformational Leadership in Education

A profile of Circle of Trust participant Dr. Ann Unterreiner, as interviewed by Courage & Renewal Facilitator Dr. Megan LeBoutillier

Ann, would you tell me the story of how you came into this work?

I attended my first retreat in Puget Sound in the fall of 2004.  It was a Circle of Trust with Rick Jackson.  I’d read Parker’s work and was curious where his work intersected with my own teaching practice.  So I went to the retreat and it was amazing.  Learning about Parker’s ideas through my own reflective experience helped me explain my own practice as a teacher; the things I’d always done internally.  The concept of the inner landscape of a teacher became a tangible something giving me a language, insights and a way of seeing courage in teachers in a new way.

I went back to Arizona, finished my Ph.D. and came to the University of Redlands to become a professor at a time when they were beginning the Educational Justice Leadership Doctoral Program.  I actually got a small grant from the University to continue going to Circle of Trust retreats.  I have been to three more retreats and find they just keep deepening my thinking about social and educational justice.
When I began designing the last practicum class for the Educational Justice Leadership Doctoral Program last year I stepped forward about doing something very experiential and having my doctoral students experience deeper reflection to develop their own leadership practice in whatever way they wanted.  We had a lot of conversations, and my Dean was very gracious.  Mike Poutiatine – also very familiar with the work of the Center for Courage and Renewal came to California and we facilitated a weekend retreat as part of the practicum course.  We held the summer retreat on campus and students stayed in dorms.  There were nineteen in this first cohort – a mix of principals, school counselors, district administrators in the area.  Some of the feedback about this work was very positive.  We work with the social movement model, the transformational model, and use it as a way to introduce the idea of taking the soul of a leader and moving it into the institution.  It was our first teaching attempt and it was a very counter-cultural experience for some of the students.  For some it really crystallized everything about transformational leadership needed in the practice of educational justice, it aligned with their social justice beliefs and they took off with the ideas into their own work.  One small group formed from the retreat and they have continued to work as a Community of Congruence together from various places around the country.  They stay in contact with conference calls and have met a couple of times.  They are bringing Parker’s work to teachers in their communities here in California, in Arkansas and in Seattle.  I’m planning to hold the retreat again this summer with my students.

During the first retreat I had one district administrator, you know, very busy and over-scheduled.  He wasn’t going to be able to attend one of the evening sessions, but he turned up anyway.  He said he had been so surprised by what he’d experienced during the day that he changed his schedule and came back because he didn’t want to miss anything.  That spoke volumes to me about what we are doing.

There is a lot of pain in education right now.  For some of the folks who went to the retreat, they now have touchstones that they can use to remember as they are trying to move through the things they need to address as leaders.  It gives them some resilience.  It is amazing how permission to talk about one’s inner landscape is so powerful for leaders.  That is what I am doing with this work—creating places where people can have conversations about their inner landscapes.  Through poetry and the Mobius strip they can give voice to things typically held in silence because of confidentiality or the political climate within education.  These conversations revitalize my preservice teachers, graduate students and the doctoral student leaders, teachers and counselors.

I continue to develop this work academically with Mike Poutiatine.  We met at a Circle of Trust.  We started thinking and writing about Transformational Leadership—connecting who you are with what you do, and how that creates transformation in organizations and systems over time.  We have presented our work at some well-attended conferences.  We presented at The International Leadership Association Conference in Los Angeles and we had a session talking about Parker’s work called “Leading From Within.”  People from around the world were standing three deep around the tables at our round table sessions.

What keeps you revitalized and refreshed for this work?

Had it not been for my own community of congruence, my supportive circle of trust, I would not have had the courage to keep bringing it up and saying, “Why don’t we try this in the practicum?” and “Why don’t we try to get the support of the Dean?”  Mike Poutiatine and Sally Hare are part of my circle of trust and I would have conversations with them.  Mike and I are working to integrate other reflection models too into what we are doing. This Educational Leadership Program is new and I had the opportunity the try something a bit alternative.  So we tried it and there was interest.  I have seen my doctoral students become so intrigued they are figuring out how to bring this work into their teaching practice.  We are going to try the retreat again this year.  If I didn’t have my own circle of trust I could not have done it because you do stand alone, and the norm within education is to pull things apart.  It takes a lot of courage I find and I could not have done it without the support of my circle of trust and going to retreats.  Each time I went to a retreat I got a new piece of wisdom that would carry me through.  This is my personal thread of professional development and I have to be patient too.

I have these two feathers that I found at a retreat on Pawley’s Island, SC in a retreat with Sally Hare.  They are touchstones and I keep them with me and around me to remind me.  They are yellow and black and I remember finding them on my first walk on the beach just before the retreat started.  I didn’t know what they meant until the last day.  It was about having to have the shadow side in order to appreciate the light.  I didn’t know it at the time but two years later in the retreat Mike and I facilitated the central focal point included a big glass bowl with sand from Pawley’s Island, and these two feathers and some shells.  These are my touchstones.  I had been studying and preparing to conduct last summer’s retreat for years.  My community of congruence, my circle of trust, is very helpful in keeping me grounded and is growing.  They are my people “out there.”